Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 3.djvu/80

practised in China from remote ages. The diviner, employing the stalks of a certain plant to represent the lines of the hexagrams, and manipulating them in accordance with certain observed indications, constructed figures supposed to represent the issue of any projected undertaking or of any anticipated conditions. It was not claimed that futurity could be laid bare by such means, but merely that, working upon given premises, the diviner could infer their due consequences. Divination, though it has great numbers of professors in China and though it is extensively credited by the masses, has long ceased to be thought worthy of educated attention. Nevertheless the literati have not by any means divested themselves of profound faith in the philosophic import of the digrams, the trigrams, and the hexagrams. Since Confucius himself said that were his life prolonged he would devote fifty years to the study of the I-king, it is evident that so long as the memory of the Sage remains green, the object of his reverence will continue to be revered by his nationals.

It is often stated that the worship of ancestors was introduced by Confucius. That is not so. Evidence furnished by the "Book of Records" shows clearly that the worship of ancestors was observed as early as the reign of Shun (2207 B. C.) What Confucius contributed to the custom was his most emphatic advocacy. "The service," he said, "which a filial son does to his parents is